Sunday, 23 April 2017

This week’s wander through
waves of other people’s unwanted consumer goods was slightly marred by me
having another fucking cold, old lawn
ornaments and dusty porcelain loses some of their sheen when you’re feeling
like utter crap - but it was self-inflicted suffering so I expect no sympathy,
I wouldn’t give it if it was you. Anyway the big news was…The Dirty Stall was
back! And this time I remembered to take a picture of (some of) it:

This is most of the action
figure section (there’s one more row or so), the rest of the stall
stretches to the right, a van’s worth and then at least this again but filled
with video games, including a box of Japanese SNES carts, bit weird. I would
have taken a lovely dramatic shot of the whole thing but I felt really self-conscious
and this was the amount of stall I could fit in while hiding behind the
stallholder’s van. I’m really behind this stall, for the third week in a row
it’s turned a good bootsale into a great one and every week he’s had new stock,
where does he get it from and more importantly, how does he get it so dirty in
the small amount of days he has it? Does he just live in a place where it does
nothing but rain topsoil and catshit? And if so (and in certain parts of Wales
that’s entirely possible) why does he leave his stock out in the open? Anyway
(again) here’s the haul:

Not especially impressive,
though this does cut out the four books and two bags filled with Crazy Bones
because I got indecisive about framing and shit, I get very uncertain when ill, Still the Edgar!Bug, She-Spawn and DragonFlyz figure (Fryte) made the trip
worthwhile, throw in a bunch of possibly racially offensive sharks, Bam Bam
Bigelow AND a Clefairy and it’s hard to grumble. If I always seem too happy and
pathetically chuffed in these posts, it’s cos I am – getting Corps figures for
50p each genuinely makes me pleased with life.

Friday, 21 April 2017

It’s
really time to update my Long and Winding Five Nights at Freddy’s post. Five
Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location and its DLC has…added and changed the way
we see the implied story-line in the FNAF games, to say the least. So once
again I’ve spent a lot of time on YouTube, Steam, the Five Nights at Freddy’s
wikis and now, TV Tropes – which is surprisingly helpful. There will be many
unmarked spoilers ahead, you have been warned, I am wearing pants though, so
that’s good.

Five
Nights At Freddy’s is a franchise based around a chain of family restaurants –
Pizzerias to be precise – that use animatronic anthropomorphic animals heavily
reminiscent of Nolan Bushnell’s Chuck E.
Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and it’s old rival (and current owner) ShowBiz Pizza Place. The first and
second games take place at two separate Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza locations, the
third a theme park attraction based on those restaurants, the fifth the storage
and showrooms for Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental and the fourth in a house
of a child who was injured at a restaurant. Each game is a point-and-click
indie survival horror game and although the exact methods differ between the
four games they all share the same simple gameplay and goal – use what you have
to keep yourself from being killed by the animatronics, though from Five Nights
at Freddy’s 2 (FNAF2) small bonus mini-games in the style of the Atari 2600
home video game console were added to give more of the backstory of the
franchise (and further scare players). All five games were created and
developed by Scott Cawthon and are available for PC (via things like Steam) and
iOS.

Sunday, 16 April 2017

I have painted so many
fences, I have painted so many fences I now resent fences, I have painted so
many fences I close my eyes and see fences, I have painted so many fucking
fences that three and a half hours of walking ‘round a dustbowl looking at
other people’s unwanted tat felt like a long soak in a hot bath. I am so dusty;
I look like a half licked Cheeto.

Today’s bootsale experience
started off looking far from promising, it was cold and gloomy and below
average size and I felt like dogshit, passing out levels of feeling shit, it
came on pretty much as soon as I arrived - but by half ‘way round the sun was
shining, I’d had a shitty burger (I’m the only person for whom market food
heals rather than ills it seems, well the only person who gets this reaction
when they’re sober anyway) and I left with three carrier bags full of dirty
toys and a happy feeling, and dust up/in every-fucking-where.

While your thoughts on
Space Precinct may ultimately be the decider here as far as I’m concerned
there’s no duds to be found, sure that’s just a cheap hollow plastic Pokémon
just under the Warlord’s left hand but it’s also Octillery: a
fucking bazooka octopus, there’s never buyer’s remorse with a bazooka
octopus. Now let’s waste a thousand words or two talking about some of them in
some more depth eh? And as always I know that what I’m about to spotlight is
nowhere near the best items in that picture, that DragonFlyz figure? I wasn’t
even sure it was released; the dinosaur bloke next to The Sandman? Never seen
one in person before in four years of buying, that Valiant annual is from 1973?
it’s old enough to be a grandfather – but fuck that, let’s talk about Page 3
Girls and Playmobil, so are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin:

Friday, 14 April 2017

I haven’t had a chance to
really rave about Pokémon on here, which is strange and sad because I fucking
LOVE Pokémon, in the League of Things I Obsess Over it’s only slightly below
the joint champions of Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I’ve been with the franchise since Generation 1, well since Red & Blue came
out in the UK anyway, we were – typically – late in getting Pokémania (but
dammit we made up for lost time with millions of pounds, outraged teachers and
the odd stabbing) and haven’t missed a Generation since. Amongst my various
other interests? Ghosts, derelict buildings and the horror genre, these I have
no made a secret of on here. Funnily enough, as this is called ‘Haunted Pokémon’
these two interests all intersect in one big excuse for me to talk about
Pokémon. Hopefully if you existed and were reading this you’d have a passing
knowledge of Pokémon and know that the game is an RPG with battles based around
an elemental game of rock-paper-scissors using Types (Fire Type, Electric Type,
Steel Type etc.) and would know that Ghost is one of those types, or at least
remember the episode of the cartoon with Haunter in it. If not, then I’ve just
told you this so it’s all good, let’s move on, because you see Ghost Type
animals need a habitat and that leads to the Pokémon world being littered with
creepy places – places of rest, haunted houses, supermarkets, the Pokémon world
is fucking filled with scary places and I’m going to pick one from each
generation of games and/or their remakes and chat about them for two paragraphs
apiece. That’s what this post is about so are you sitting comfortably? then
I’ll begin:

Sunday, 9 April 2017

Bootsale season has begun
again! Dunton Bootsale - my favourite haunt for other people’s crap – is back
on! How was it? Big, motherfucking big in fact, I had my suspicious (I’m
criminally sad remember?) we might be looking at a nice size bootsale; very
good weather was predicted, it was very good weather the day before, the kids
are on school holiday (something about some bloke being killed with a cross and
buns and eggs by a giant rabbit or something like that? I dunno) and it’s very early
in the season but fucking hell it was so big it was ‘on the other side’
*gasp!*. It wasn’t a ghost bootsale, it just means that they couldn’t
physically cram any more sellers onto the regular half of the massive field they use and had to start using the other side of it, where the cars usually park,
when Dunton Bootsale is on the other side, it’s at its healthiest with the
number of stalls legitimately into four figures.

It was dusty, it was hot,
it was dusty, there was no clouds, no cover, it was dusty, there was a 30 minute wait if you
wanted to pee, did I mention it was dusty? Crying children, shouting
stallholders (everyone knows the best way to break the language barrier is to
say the exact same thing they didn’t understand the first time again, but this
time much louder) and the smell of Eastern European bald spots sizzling in the
sun. But I was upbeat (a rarity for me), I’ve spent a solid 7 days in bed
having gotten so run down both physically and mentally all I could do was sleep
and watch Midsomer Murders while living on chocolate, Night Nurse and
anti-depressants so I was raring to be anywhere, but especially at a huge
bootsale, hopeful that I could start the season off right with a decent
selection of dirty old stuff, I overachieved:

Seriously my ‘haul’ (and hall,
actually, as that’s where they currently are – just by the phone table)
includes Spawn’s boss, Skeletor’s pet velociraptor1 and Killer Croc
– when you can say that those represent only a fraction of the stuff you
brought home with you, you have gone well past the point of ‘decent selection’.
Everything was insanely cheap too, like pre-eBay days cheap, Malebolgia there
was a fiver but he was an anomaly that completely messes up the figures,
nothing else was over £3 and most of it was under £2, bags of stuff for 25p,
Ninja Turtles for a £1, it was just like old times, god I’m knackered and so,
so dirty. And no I’m not going to explain that Tomb Raider in her bra and
knickers because, at the moment, I actually can’t.

Sunday, 2 April 2017

To put it mildly I didn’t
like the Suicide Squad film, to put it truthfully I fucking hate the new
Suicide Squad film. Some of that’s on me and inability to let go of the John Ostrander
era (the film owes as much to the Nu52 Suicide Squad as it does anything else)
but a lot of it’s on them for making yet another dark, disappointing and
horrible DC movie, Christopher Nolan has a lot to answer for. I liked ‘Boomerang,
I hated the Joker, Killer Croc has had so many looks and personalities it’s
really impossible to do him ‘wrong’ and it was basically a Batman spin-off film.
And yet I bought an action figure from it, why? Well because I really like
Katana’s costume in it, it’s an evolution of her weird robot-like Nu52
redesign, approximating it using street clothes because DC is terrified anyone
will figure out that one of their superhero films is a superhero film, but it
works and for me this is the first time Katana looks as badass as she’s
supposed to be, devoid of the awkward sleepwear Red and Yellow costumes of her
Outsiders days or the soulless and uneven robotic Nu52 look.